For the last few weeks, I've had trouble sleeping for the expected eight hours, or however long is usual. In essence, I seem to be waking at 5 am and then struggling to get back to sleep for an hour or more, eventually dozing from 6.30 until whatever time I have to get up (fortunately, most days of the week, there isn't a 'have to'). I don't know if there are noisy birds waking at that time, or if the earlier sunrise is disturbing me, but it's pretty consistent. Finally, this morning, I decided it wasn't worth trying to go back to sleep, got up just before 6 and, armed with a cup of coffee, headed out to my office in my dressing gown.
Two hours later and I'd finished the coffee, listened to the whole of the playlist for the Launton Village Players' forthcoming summer show (trying to learn the words of the songs, or at least the tunes) and added over 800 words to the WIP that had languished for a couple of months, pondered but never augmented.
I have always thought I was more productive creatively in the afternoon, once the tedium of chores had been overcome in the morning, so to say I am surprised is putting it mildly. Is this a one-off or a sign of a changing creative process? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I'm off to have a nap. Because, you know, I was up early.
Showing posts with label Launton Village Players. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Launton Village Players. Show all posts
Tuesday, 9 June 2015
Monday, 29 October 2012
What makes a performance?
This week has had rather a lot of music in it, one way or another.
Partly, this has been the composition of it, inasmuch as we had a meeting with the director and producer of the next Launton Village Players pantomime (oh yes we did!) in which the script as written by the OH with occasional help from yours truly was read and the songs listened to. LVP pride themselves on having all original music for our pantomimes and we are extraordinarily lucky to have Steve Webber there to write that original music, quite apart from enough talented musicians in the group to then play the music in the shows (apologies to anyone offended by the split infinitive). Listening to the first drafts, as it were, of the songs is interesting, because a pantomime song has to be more than just musical, it has to match the mood, the lyrics and the ability of the singers, so we're trying to tick all those different boxes as we listen.
But music also featured when we went to 229 The Venue in London on Sunday evening, in support of our friend Judy Dyble, original lead-singer of Fairport Convention, who was rather anxious about her first solo live performance in she-didn't-say how long. It was an evening promoted by a record label that featured three other bands, all presumably with the same label. I can't really comment on the first band, as we arrived while they were performing their last number, but it sounded tuneful enough just before it ended. And then the next band set up. I say 'band' because they were billed as such, but it was two guys with guitars and an awful lot of electronic gizmos, and during their set, one of them appeared to spend more time fiddling with the knobs on one of his gizmos than he did pressing the strings of his guitar. With so much gadgetry to monitor, perhaps it was not surprising that they made no eye contact with the audience, but it felt very strange. According to the notes put out by the record label, they were creating a soundscape, but to me it would have made better film music with the players in a studio somewhere. The two performances after them did a much better job of engaging with the audience, whatever one's opinion of the music might have been. Heck, the band I was in at university did a better job of engaging with the audience and we didn't have sound and lighting technicians to keep us on the straight and narrow!
All of which made me wonder about the nature of performance, not least because I will reading at the end of November at a poetry evening in Oxford (part of the the Poet's House group on 25th November, 5pm, includes cake!). Does the quality of what is being performed matter as much as the quality of the performance itself? I have a suspicion that there is some real rubbish out there being received with great acclaim largely because of its superb delivery. And when we go along to these performances, be they music, poetry or performance, to what extent are we influenced by the skill of the performers rather than the sublimity of their material?
Oh, and Judy Dyble was sublime in both material and performance skills. :-)
Partly, this has been the composition of it, inasmuch as we had a meeting with the director and producer of the next Launton Village Players pantomime (oh yes we did!) in which the script as written by the OH with occasional help from yours truly was read and the songs listened to. LVP pride themselves on having all original music for our pantomimes and we are extraordinarily lucky to have Steve Webber there to write that original music, quite apart from enough talented musicians in the group to then play the music in the shows (apologies to anyone offended by the split infinitive). Listening to the first drafts, as it were, of the songs is interesting, because a pantomime song has to be more than just musical, it has to match the mood, the lyrics and the ability of the singers, so we're trying to tick all those different boxes as we listen.
But music also featured when we went to 229 The Venue in London on Sunday evening, in support of our friend Judy Dyble, original lead-singer of Fairport Convention, who was rather anxious about her first solo live performance in she-didn't-say how long. It was an evening promoted by a record label that featured three other bands, all presumably with the same label. I can't really comment on the first band, as we arrived while they were performing their last number, but it sounded tuneful enough just before it ended. And then the next band set up. I say 'band' because they were billed as such, but it was two guys with guitars and an awful lot of electronic gizmos, and during their set, one of them appeared to spend more time fiddling with the knobs on one of his gizmos than he did pressing the strings of his guitar. With so much gadgetry to monitor, perhaps it was not surprising that they made no eye contact with the audience, but it felt very strange. According to the notes put out by the record label, they were creating a soundscape, but to me it would have made better film music with the players in a studio somewhere. The two performances after them did a much better job of engaging with the audience, whatever one's opinion of the music might have been. Heck, the band I was in at university did a better job of engaging with the audience and we didn't have sound and lighting technicians to keep us on the straight and narrow!
All of which made me wonder about the nature of performance, not least because I will reading at the end of November at a poetry evening in Oxford (part of the the Poet's House group on 25th November, 5pm, includes cake!). Does the quality of what is being performed matter as much as the quality of the performance itself? I have a suspicion that there is some real rubbish out there being received with great acclaim largely because of its superb delivery. And when we go along to these performances, be they music, poetry or performance, to what extent are we influenced by the skill of the performers rather than the sublimity of their material?
Oh, and Judy Dyble was sublime in both material and performance skills. :-)
Monday, 8 October 2012
I'm not a grumpy old woman, honest...
There has been a slight delay in posting recently, for a variety of reasons. Instead, I have for example been doing full-time teaching to cover for someone on jury duty (exhausting), going to a book launch for the lovely Liz Harris (exciting) and relocating my many things from the dining room table to my newly-refurbished office (exiting. Also clutching at a straw).
So, moving swiftly on from the obvious omission of editing in that list, another village issue. Each month, our village has a community newsletter, with news from some of the many groups that are run in the village, adverts from local services, details of forthcoming events (for example, a play by the Launton Village Players and a musical show by the Bicester Choral and Operatic Society [known more sensibly as BCOS]). Most months there is also a page dedicated to 'the communique from the Grumpy Old Men of Launton.
They live up to their soubriquet. Usually it's about parking or speeding, more recently the weather has come in for a fair old bashing, and this month they've been very grumpy about potholes. It's an easy target these days. Country roads in particular seem to disintegrate at the drop of a hat and the current fad for short-term solutions and simply filling a hole with tarmac only makes the overall surface worse. We've all seen them and I wouldn't normally want to join in the tired chorus.
Except. Except driving to school last week, I had to swerve slightly to avoid the small area in the middle of the junction in Marsh Gibbon that had been fenced off by traffic barriers. Excellent, you may think, preparation for some repair work. But the judder that I felt as I drove past it was less than excellent and I peered in my rear-view mirror, assuming I had run over something large. Nothing there. So on the return journey, I went even wider and even slower and saw, *next to* the cordoned-off area, an enormous pothole sufficiently deep to house the entire Monty Python team and extended family.
I was left wondering what had been the purpose of the temporary traffic island. Has it been moved by some mischievous person on leaving the pub, so that it no longer surrounds the trench in the middle of the road? Or is it in place for the purposes of a utility company that has nothing to do with the other hole so they certainly won't touch it for fear of litigation? Answers on a postcard, please; just don't accidentally post it in a pothole.
So, moving swiftly on from the obvious omission of editing in that list, another village issue. Each month, our village has a community newsletter, with news from some of the many groups that are run in the village, adverts from local services, details of forthcoming events (for example, a play by the Launton Village Players and a musical show by the Bicester Choral and Operatic Society [known more sensibly as BCOS]). Most months there is also a page dedicated to 'the communique from the Grumpy Old Men of Launton.
They live up to their soubriquet. Usually it's about parking or speeding, more recently the weather has come in for a fair old bashing, and this month they've been very grumpy about potholes. It's an easy target these days. Country roads in particular seem to disintegrate at the drop of a hat and the current fad for short-term solutions and simply filling a hole with tarmac only makes the overall surface worse. We've all seen them and I wouldn't normally want to join in the tired chorus.
Except. Except driving to school last week, I had to swerve slightly to avoid the small area in the middle of the junction in Marsh Gibbon that had been fenced off by traffic barriers. Excellent, you may think, preparation for some repair work. But the judder that I felt as I drove past it was less than excellent and I peered in my rear-view mirror, assuming I had run over something large. Nothing there. So on the return journey, I went even wider and even slower and saw, *next to* the cordoned-off area, an enormous pothole sufficiently deep to house the entire Monty Python team and extended family.
I was left wondering what had been the purpose of the temporary traffic island. Has it been moved by some mischievous person on leaving the pub, so that it no longer surrounds the trench in the middle of the road? Or is it in place for the purposes of a utility company that has nothing to do with the other hole so they certainly won't touch it for fear of litigation? Answers on a postcard, please; just don't accidentally post it in a pothole.
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